Overview:

• Recognition and registration are amalgamated rather than ideally differentiated; a focus is placed on the latter as legal registration while the former, existential recognition, is given few to no means of attainment.

• Informational requirements are appropriate though require continued monitoring ensure that undue expansion does not take place; politicisation and restriction occurs in the requirement that a district commissioner provided a letter of recommendation.

• The fact that individual congregations need not gain separate registration from the broader religious body is helpful to reducing the restrictiveness of the registration process.

• There is a degree of imbalance regarding what Muslim groups and Christian groups need to provide in the process of registration.

• The rule of mandatory registration on both the mainland and on Zanzibar violates the Bielefeldt provision with the two layers of registration procedure even further restrictive.

• Ongoing political tensions between Tanzania an Zanzibar using religion as a means of stoke sectarianism undermines efforts to maintain religious liberty.

Positive elements:

• Nil.

Recommendations:

• Repeal laws demanding mandatory registration and revoke policies allowing the government to intervene in the internal affairs of religious organisations.

• Revoke membership quotas and retributions for unregistration.

• Establish a revitalised recognition that can provide both existential recognition and legal registration to all belief systems equally.